Season Eight: Week 6

Tuesday / October 9
Written by Frannie

We welcomed two new members to the ensemble tonight. Both of these women signed up for the waiting list after having seen one performance (or more!), so they pretty much knew what they were getting into. [insert smiley face emoji here] Several women made sure they knew they were in a safe space. “I couldn’t ask for a better family,” said one. “What goes on in here stays in here.” Another woman added, “Kinda like Vegas… except it’s Shakespeare.”

We asked the first newbie our traditional three questions, and, though she was clearly nervous to an extent that expressed itself physically, she gave straightforward answers and got a lot of smiles in return. One woman, reacting (I think) to the new member’s anxiety, reassured her loudly and soothingly that her answers were great and we were all glad she was there. The other new member then exuberantly introduced herself, organically covering everything we were going to ask as she did. “Well, you just answered all three questions in one fell swoop!” I joked. Last year’s Macduff gasped, “Oh!” Her whole face lit up. “That’s my line! Remember? All my pretty chickies in one fell swoop!” To say she was tickled is an understatement. I absolutely love when those things happen — it reinforces, for all of us, just how much ownership we have of these plays.

We began our reading with Act II scene v, in which Malvolio finds the letter Maria planted to make him think Olivia is in love with him. There was a little bit of a tussle between two ensemble members who are good friends, and who both, for whatever reason, are very drawn to Malvolio. Eventually one ceded the part to the other, and I made her promise that she’d be on deck to read him next. There was no bad blood here — they “play” bicker all the time — but the former member doesn’t often gravitate to particular characters and did seem a little miffed.

Twelfth Night has turned out to be an interesting play to work on within our usual structure, and without the No Fear editions (which are still en route) — some of the wordplay is complex enough that it can obscure or distract from the larger meaning and/or action of the scene. But there are still plenty of moments that are crystal clear, to varying degrees, for all of us. When we arrived at Malvolio’s reading aloud, “Remember who commended thy yellow stockings and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered…” the longtime ensemble member who was reading the part burst out laughing so hard that she had to pause the reading. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to catch her breath, “I’m just picturing whoever plays Malvolio—” and her own laughter cut her off again.

I’ve been working with this woman for a long time, and she’s always had a gift for getting at least some meaning from any Shakespeare we’ve read, but this is the most effortless text work I’ve seen her do yet. It just clicks for her. The jokes crack her up on first reading, she’s able to sum up scenes in detail without further analysis, and she keeps having all these clear, fully formed staging ideas that are absolutely spot-on. It’s not like she hasn’t been creative in the past — to the contrary, she’s been one of our best problem-solvers — but she’s on another level this year. In fact, I’d been mildly concerned about how few people have been speaking up to summarize and analyze scenes, but as I watched the others react to her obvious delight, I realized that this is (at least partly) because she just gets it, and they’re eager to hear her insight before giving their own. It usually doesn’t work for one person to so “dominate” scene analysis, but in this case I think it’s actually very beneficial to the ensemble. She’s not overpowering the conversation in any way; the rest of us are simply deferring to her position as an elder in the group and, at least for the moment, the person most in tune with the way this play works.

We realized, though, that this scene wasn’t going to make total sense until we put it on its feet, so we expanded our circle and brought over some artificial trees to create the playing space we needed. A few people wanted a particular ensemble member, who has lately come out of her shell, to read Toby. She was hesitant until Kyle volunteered to read Fabian, and they turned out to be a dynamic duo, without question. Another woman, who’s been challenging herself a lot this season, volunteered to read Maria, and I insisted that the woman who’d demurred to read Malvolio earlier do so now.

It took a minute to get going — the woman reading Sir Toby got to the word “niggardly” and burst out laughing. “It doesn’t mean what it sounds like now!” I shouted. Still chuckling, she decided to use the word “mean” in its place. “Take two!” someone shouted, and the scene began again. But our Toby jumped one of Fabian’s lines, everyone got confused, we all cracked up again, and they restarted the scene. “Take three… Action!”

As we made our way through the scene, we had to pause now and then as we found action in the text and looped back to do it. At Toby’s first exclamation during Malvolio’s letter-reading, that ensemble member burst through the artificial trees — with Malvolio directly facing her. It was incredibly funny, but clearly not what the scene called for, so we paused, figured out a solution, and took it back. At one point, when Malvolio had been reading for a while, the three folks hiding behind the trees picked up those trees and slowly moved behind Malvolio to the other side of the playing space. They stayed there for a bit and then started slowly inching toward Malvolio, as if to hear her better. Meanwhile, our Malvolio arrived at the line, “I do not fool myself—” paused, said, “I’m gettin’ tired,” to another huge burst of ensemble laughter, and then kept plugging away.

The scene ended, and we all agreed that, while of course it will need work (and a lot of cutting), the bit with the trees absolutely has to stay. One woman, who was on fire, suggested that those hiding in the trees could throw out lines from Macbeth (in Birnam Wood) and perhaps reprimand each other for getting the plays confused. This led to a brief brainstorm about what else we could throw into the mix in that way; the comedy is so broad and ridiculous in Twelfth Night that it seems like it could stand for us to go a little bonkers with gags like that. The Keeper of the Jokes recorded all of this in our dedicated notebook.

Rather than delve into the next scene, we decided to use the rest of our time for monologues. A longtime ensemble member, who has been frank about identifying with Viola but intrigued by Sir Toby (she is an incredible comedian), said she had chosen one just that day. Or, rather, it had been chosen for her. “I asked the universe to give me the proper character. My girlfriend [who’s been pushing for Viola] was right… I opened the book — I said, ‘I need a good one’ — BOOM. Viola. Then I was like… ‘You bitch.” We all laughed with her. Her reading of the piece was a bit halting because she’d only begun to work with it today, but she clearly understands the piece — and the character — in a way that I’m not sure the rest of us do. I hope she keeps exploring this.

After my glorious fail last week, I promised the ensemble that I’d make it up to them by performing four monologues tonight, and I did. It was a mixed bag for me personally, and reactions were a bit varied as well. I felt best about the first two (Edmund from King Lear; Viola from Twelfth Night), not good about the third (Hermione from The Winter’s Tale), and iffy about the last (Anne from Richard III). My analysis was that I’ve been trying to get a handle on that Hermione monologue for a really long time, and it just never works the way I want it to; I think I’m done with it now, and that’s okay. My being off on that one, though, colored my performance of the last, which was much quieter than I’ve done it before, and even resigned toward the end. It’s something I’d want to explore in a more formal environment; maybe being a bit numb or spent when Richard enters gives the scene an interesting tone. But that’s not what we’re in SIP to do!

My personal thoughts aside, I got some very positive feedback from ensemble members (though I welcomed them to give more pointed critiques in journal entries if they wanted to). I was mostly glad just to have followed through on what I said I would do (and why I said I would do it, I have no idea — I get a little slap-happy sometimes), and equally glad to have had more success than last week. “You are a monologue monster!” said one woman.

Friday / October 12
Written by Matt

Among the several joyous check-ins today was a conversation about Banksy! It came up because of something one of the women had painted on a big plastic mug, but quickly turned to how badass they thought it was that Banksy’s most recent high-profile art piece had sold for $1.4 million and, at the moment of its sale, shredded itself, using a shredder embedded in the frame.

After lowering the ring, we dove into the play. Everyone was pretty tired today, so we focused on reading. We are into Act III now, and we ended up reading the first three scenes. The first went by quickly--everyone seemed to understand, which is huge! Before we started using the No Fear Shakespeare editions, which have contemporary English “translations” on the facing page, we often struggled simply to comprehend the plays even after the first read-through. We now have enough veteran members with deep knowledge of the language that everyone is carried along with them, even though we don’t have No Fear Twelfth Nights yet.

We moved directly on to scene ii. Among the highlights in this ridiculous scene was a returning member giving a perfect rendition of badly mispronounced French. I mentioned that the entire subplot of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria has always struck me as just a bunch of friends sitting in the basement and making up plots. “Sounds like some of my friends at home!” chimed in one of the women, right on cue. Another veteran member has really taken to Maria. She will likely be home before the show, but “if I were here for the play,” she assured us, “I’d be Maria. I’d do it good!” This was a remarkable statement from a woman who could barely be coaxed out on stage as recently as last year--Maria is in at least half a dozen scenes and has dozens of lines.

No one had the energy to walk through this scene on its feet, so we went right into the next one. Scene iii is a dialogue between Sebastian and Antonio--and the second time we have seen them in the play. A number of the women were taken by the intimate language between them. “Wow!” exclaimed one. “Antonio has the hots for Sebastian--clearly!” She imitated Antonio’s imagined low voice: “‘Hey, you go into town. Here’s my purse; buy yourself something nice.’” Everyone laughed.

Another member pushed back gently. “I don’t think it’s nothing funny here… I feel like he landed here and he found this guy, and he has to trust him.” The first woman countered, “But they just met!” The second woman stuck to her understanding. “But if you was on an island,” she said, “and somebody popped up and needed help, and it was just you...how much would it matter to you that you just met?” She went on, talking about how, in Romeo & Juliet (in which she played the nurse five years ago), “people fall in love at first sight. They just see them and decide, that’s what I want.”

Frannie asked about all the love at first sight in Twelfth Night, especially Olivia, who falls in love with Orsino offstage. The same woman came right back with “I thought Olivia was just vulnerable.” Her statement caused a little buzz in the group, as people considered this simple but interesting assessment. “Yeah,” agreed a new member, “she didn’t want to see men for, like, seven years?... After the death of her brother.”

The longtime member who had begun by offering an alternate explanation of Sebastian and Antonio’s intimacy was far from done, though (she warned us that “I feel the [Shakespeare] Holy Ghost coming on!” a reference to an amazing moment last season). “I think sometimes we’re crippled by the No Fear,” she said. She talked about how for years she had felt unable to understand the language of the plays. She even talked about how, when she was in The Tempest, she didn’t fully understand some of the lines until she was saying or hearing them onstage in performance. And she described a moment of laughing aloud at a joke in Twelfth Night while reading it in the original. At that moment, she said, she felt pride in her progress over years of work with Shakespeare in Prison. This moment, familiar to all of us who grow to love Shakespeare, when the words no longer seem like an arcane code that takes tremendous effort to decipher, is a pleasure that we could recognize. But for this woman, it is that and more--her accomplishment is truly staggering, to get to a place where she could laugh aloud to herself while reading a Shakespearean comedy on her bunk. Frannie told her how exciting this was to hear, while at the same time reassuring everyone that there’s nothing wrong with relying on the No Fear—not only does it take time to get as comfortable with the language as she is, there are different learning styles best suited to different versions of the text. It’s been very beneficial to have ensemble members at Parnall reading from two editions, and it will make our work go that much faster at WHV to have someone so fluent in the ensemble. “Congratulations,” said Frannie to her, “you have become a resource!”

At last, a new member who has expressed a lot of anxiety about performing in public read a short monologue from Richard III. Her eyes were glued to the text, but she got through it, and everyone gave her a big round of applause! “That got my heart racing!” she exclaimed. She said that it was the first time she had ever done anything like that. She also shared about wanting to do an angry monologue (which this one certainly was!) because of some anger she feels at her family situation. A monologue felt like a safe place to put that feeling, and she said that she was a little frustrated that she couldn’t channel it more during her performance. “I have the anger,” she said. “But whenever I come into the ensemble, I can’t keep the anger. It all goes away.” Frannie made sure she knew that she’s allowed to express anger in the circle, and the others nodded vigorously, but she said she just didn’t want that. She also described taking steps to ensure that her work at prison would not interfere with this group. “I’m not going to let them take that away from me,” she said emphatically. “This is a space where I feel like myself.”

What was most striking about her words was not the sentiment they expressed--it is always good to hear such positive and affirming things about the program, but many of our members have shared similar feelings--it was how early in her first season she had come to feel this way. Barely six weeks in, she feels like she has found a home. More than anything, this speaks to the open, safe, welcoming culture that is nurtured and sustained by the core members of our ensemble. They have set the tone, and they have made Shakespeare in Prison the sort of ensemble that can enfold and become indispensable in a person’s life in so short a time. This is nothing short of remarkable.

Season Eight: Week 5

Tuesday / October 2

Written by Frannie

Tonight was our monologue-off! Those of us who shared each brought something a little different. During check-in, a longtime member, who’d said she’d be performing something from a show we did years ago, told me she was going to throw me for a loop: she brought in a piece of her own. “I’m excited,” she said. “Being in my element, people being receptive… I was like, ‘I could do a Shakespeare piece,’ but I wanted to do something that hit home for me, and I thought, ‘What better place to do it?” She was definitely excited — I don’t remember what the segue was, but my next note is, “Turns into Oprah with mints.” (“You get a mint! And you get a mint! And YOU get a mint!”)

The first woman to share was last season’s Porter, performing her version of the drunken monologue and scene. If you were reading along then, you probably remember how freeing it was when she rewrote the piece, in keeping with its spirit, but with language that resonated more for her and, honestly, was much funnier. Somehow it had gotten even more hilarious after a few months, and she’s super comfortable with improvising now, too: when med lines were called and a few people had to leave, she called out (in character), “Where y’all going during my play?!” She then shared the process by which she developed the piece with our newbies to encourage them to get creative rather than give up when things are challenging.

Emma, one of our facilitator apprentices, got up to do one of Anne’s monologues from Richard III. She was honest about being kind of nervous, never really having done any theatre — and she was also honest about how excited she was to put a speech on its feet that she’s always loved. A longtime ensemble member stood in as Richard, and Emma launched into the monologue, at one point pausing to say, “Ooooooh, that felt good!” She reflected afterward that she had felt very liberated by diving in, and that “it’s always fun to curse somebody!”. I asked what everyone had gotten from the piece, and one woman said, “You were pissed off because someone got injured, and you want revenge.”

Then a woman, who was pretty closed off last season but has been much more open this year, shared an original poem, warning us first that it was very dark — and it was. And it was good. “How do you feel?” Kyle asked when she’d finished. “Shaky,” she smiled, saying, too, that she was glad she’d shared it. We asked her if she could tell us more about the piece, and she said it was “about the thoughts that take over your mind and hold you captive in a false reality”. We loved it. “It took a lot of nerves for me to share that,” she said.

The woman who played Edward in Richard III got up to perform her big monologue, albeit in its original form rather than as we’d cut it. “You know I’m shy, right?” she grinned. I looked over at Kyle, who was absolutely beaming — we’ve always loved her take on this piece. She went up on lines several times — it’s a long speech, and it’s been a very long time since she’s performed it — but, rather than getting down on herself the way she used to, she simply asked for line and kept going. Her first comment afterward was about not having remembered some of the lines, but, again, the comment wasn’t harsh. We told her that we’d loved it anyway.

The woman who played Margaret in Richard III rose to perform one of that character’s monologues, but without cuts and with “a different take” than when we staged the show. Instead of railing against those around her, as is traditional, she was very quiet with the piece, almost as if talking to herself. This increased the emotional intensity in a way and made us listen more closely to what she was saying. “It’s kind of what I’m going through,” she said afterward. “The first time I did it, she was very vengeful, and, like, ‘I told you so.’ But I look at those words different now.” Another woman said, “I could feel your emotions in it.”

Then the woman who’d been so excited at check-in asked us all to move from our circle into the house so she could use the whole stage for her piece. It took a few minutes for her to get to a place where she was ready, and then she committed wholeheartedly to an original piece that was part spoken word, part song, and part dance. It was fantastic, personal, and brutally honest, bringing several other ensemble members to tears as they related to what she said. When she was finished, she stood backstage with a friend. We couldn’t see her to know what was going on, but we got the feeling that she was upset. Another ensemble member and Kyle went to her. After a few moments, one of the women said, “Should we all go back?” We did, surrounding her with praise, support, and gratitude for what she’d shared. As we did, one of the women suddenly popped out from the door behind her, making us all laugh and feel ready to move on.

Facilitators also shared monologues, fully committed, and with varying degrees of “success”. I had a particularly spectacular fail, as I attempted to do a piece that I’d memorized only the day before, but just couldn’t stay focused due to a really bad headache. That said, the ensemble fully supported and encouraged me, and no one made me feel badly when I gave up and said I’d try again next week. I thanked them for that, and one woman said, “No, you doing that made us all feel a lot better about when we mess up.”

A new ensemble member shared a poem by Yeats that she really likes, throwing her book on the ground in a moment of total commitment to the piece’s passion. It was great! Afterward, she said that her heart was racing, but that she felt good.

Before we left, I handed out a packet of information about Commedia dell’arte, including pictures of the characters, so we can all think a little more about if/how we’d like to draw on that tradition. We’ll see where it goes!

Friday / October 5

Written by Matt

Today was a little bit sparsely attended—by everybody! Frannie was out of town at a conference with a Shakespeare in Prison alumna, and a couple of our regulars in the group were taking a day off to deal with personal issues. Still, a strong core group was present, and we gathered into a tight circle to read some more monologues after check-in.

Unlike the big performances of Tuesday, the readings today were intimate and performed sitting in our circle. They were no less affecting, however, since we were all so close together and listening intently. A new member read a poem that had stuck with her from another program, and she described wanting to read it to the group as an act of solidarity and support. “Us, as females,” she said, “we usually try to bring each other down,” and she commented on how comfortable she felt in the circle of our ensemble, where everybody was there to lift each other up. A bunch of the other women started nodding and saying, “yes, yes,” as she spoke. Another member, who used to be very shy, read a poem she wrote in a different, and very intense, program. As she read, the others murmured their support and agreement. Afterwards, the woman who read said that she wanted to share her poem because she wants the ensemble to know what she’s struggled with and is striving to overcome. She said that she’s trying to embody the mantra of “catch it, check it, change it” that is taught in a number of other programs.

It had been a long time since we had read anything from the play, so one veteran had to bring us up to speed. It helped that the scene we were reading (Act II, scene iii) is silly and high-energy and relatively easy to follow. It also helped that the woman who volunteered to play Feste was fearless about singing the fool’s lines, many of which are delivered in song, culminating in a drunken duet with Sir Toby Belch. We were having so much fun that when our Sir Andrew Aguecheek had to leave, a notoriously shy ensemble member stepped right up to fill in, and helped to ridicule our hilariously self-serious Malvolio, whose lack of amusement gave everyone even more raucous energy. Maria was played by another normally reticent woman, who figured out halfway through the scene that Maria was “a bitchy bartender.” “Oh, okay,” she said with a definitive nod. “I got this!”

After reading the scene through, some members were confused, but our Feste was ready with a detailed explanation of the entire scene, including the plot hatched by Maria against Malvolio—to convince the humorless steward that Olivia is in love with him. This addition to the already complicated love-triangle-or-is-it-a-rhombus had a few members scratching their heads. “We’re gonna need a whole chart,” offered a new member, whereupon the woman next to her opened a notebook page to draw the diagram out as yet another with a firm grasp of the intrigues talked it out. The chart was a mess of arrows and lines—this is a Shakespearean comedy, after all!—but we all felt more confident after seeing it represented visually.

We put the scene up on its feet, which increased the energy level even more. A new member filled in as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and afterwards said that she preferred reading those lines out while being able to move and interact with others; “it helped to put some feeling behind it,” she said. The woman who played Malvolio, said that she was beginning to identify with his seriousness: “It made me feel kinda powerful,” she said of her entrance into the scene, “like, here are all these kids, and I’m an adult.”

We worked briefly through the next scene before leaving, but agreed that we needed to go back and cover it again with more people and more time—a lot happens, and the love-polygon gets even more complicated as Viola tries to explain her love for Orsino to the clueless man’s own face. What was most exciting about this scene’s first run-through was who volunteered to read. Feste was played by the same veteran, who reprised her singing role. A woman who used to seem super-shy gave an over-the-top reading of Orsino, and a brand-new member volunteered to read Viola, the first time she had read anything in front of the ensemble. It’s always gratifying to see people come into the ensemble, especially now that we have such a strong core group, and find the confidence within themselves—and the support of others—to take their first step into reading Shakespeare aloud in front of the whole group.

Season Eight: Week 4

Tuesday / September 25

Written by Matt

The first order of business today was to add new members! It’s still early in the season, and it will never be easier to jump in than now. The group decided to bring on another five people. “Let’s keep it rolling!” said a veteran of many seasons. Another woman looked around at the rest of the ensemble and asked, “Does anybody else want to quit?” People laughed, but she persisted, “No, seriously! So we know how many.”

The first exercise we played was an improv game called Rant, in which one member of the ensemble begins to “rant” about some subject, approaching it with a single, clear emotion. At some point, another member tags and replaces the person in the center, resuming the “rant” with the same emotion as the first, only more intense. The game continues until someone reaches peak intensity in whatever emotion (anger, fear, happiness, etc.).

First up, the rant was about macaroni and cheese, which was something almost everyone could agree on--mostly on their anger about “fancy” mac and cheese. One woman grew so angry that she threw her own shoe at the ground, and another simply screamed with no words, which ended the scene. During the quick debrief after the round, one member seemed confused. Frannie boiled it down: “Mostly, we’re just screaming at each other.” The woman seemed relieved. “I can do that,” she assured us, and hollered one of her lines from last season at the top of her lungs: “WHAT SIGHTS, MY LORD?”

For the second round, the first member to speak picked a topic a little closer to home for many of the women: parole. Quite unlike the generalized, sometimes cartoonish anger they had expressed about mac and cheese, many of the rants about this subject were personal and eloquent. “They have preconceived notions of who I am. What about my change? What about the part of me that is better than it was?” Other women built on the foundation, echoing the desire to be seen and heard. “They’ve never even met me.” “They don’t know us.” “All they see is a piece of paper.” It’s unusual to delve so deeply (and honestly) into something so personal this early in the season, and we thanked the woman who’d jump started it. This also led to a brief, but solid, conversation of how we want to express emotions that are “true”, rather than those that are “real”; this was a good example because, while everyone appreciated what was being done and expressed, they didn’t feel comfortable actively participating.

We played a few more rounds of Rant, trying out different emotions (like fear, in a Hitchcockian sequence about being afraid of birds).

Then we moved on to the text, and we finally finished Act I. After determining that one of our most expressive members was going completely against type in reading the self-serious Malvolio, we quickly ran through the end of Act I, scene v. A number of our veterans are delighted by Twelfth Night, especially after such a long run of tragedies. “I love it!” exclaimed one woman, “There’s just so much you can do with it!” Another woman agreed: “It mimics life in here a lot,” she said, including the shifting gender roles.

Already, many of the women are thinking about the possibilities for staging the play. “You have to figure out how to deliver to the audience that you are someone pretending to be someone else,” one said of Viola, and she said that this scene felt to her like it was straight out of her class on men and masculinity. When we began Act II, that same woman read Viola’s speech, and she--who has been in the group for a long time and has worked hard to get to this level of comfort and confidence with Shakespeare’s language--relished every syllable of the speech. “I nailed it, Frannie,” she said after she ended. Perhaps inspired by her example, the group decided in the closing moments of the session to have a “monologue-off” on Tuesday, whatever that means. I guess we’ll find out!

Friday / September 28

Written by Frannie

After an extended check-in, it was pretty clear that what we all needed was a chill evening — just to relax and have a little fun together, with no pressure to be productive. That’s perfectly fine sometimes, and, frankly, often turns out to be more productive than trying to force ourselves to “work”. That was definitely the case tonight.

I introduced a fabulous improv game called “Beat Poet”. In this game, one person at a time performs a “beat poem”, the title of which is suggested by the audience and often takes the form of two unrelated concepts. The idea is not to give a good performance, or even a mediocre one — both are totally acceptable, but this game is at its most fun when the poems are downright BAD. There is literally no way to do it wrong. The idea is just to let loose and free associate.

The game lasted far longer than I thought it would, which was exciting. There are always a few women in the ensemble who take to the games immediately, but it can be challenging to get a good number of people to participate. Improv is really, really scary when you’ve been conditioned to constantly doubt your ideas and abilities, to see your mistakes as catastrophic, and to fear messing up to a point of being immobilized. Improv can be truly loaded in a correctional setting.

Three of our vets started us off, committing wholeheartedly to some very, very bad poems: Government and Goldfish (“I just thought about how, when I was growing up, I had goldfish, and they just used to die… Like the government…”), Security Cameras on Mars, and Shrimps and Roses. The group grew increasingly relaxed, and one of our newbies said, “I’ll do it.” Everyone cheered — it’s no small thing to put yourself out there, period, and, since this game is particularly freeform, it requires a lot of trust in the ensemble and willingness to be vulnerable.

Her poem was Big Butts and Little Cars, and it was absolutely dreadful. We loved it. Then one of our vets, whose apparent role this year is to constantly let people know how much we want them to participate, even when they’re hesitant, slyly suggested that one of last season’s witches take a turn. When she hesitated, the vet said, “Do it as a character! Do it as your witch!” That did it: up she stood! The name of her poem was Witches and Chicken Soup, and, after taking a moment, she dove in, lunging and swooping, having a great time. “It was awesome,” she said afterward. “It just took me a minute to get into character.”

Then Matt, Lauren, and I went right in a row, with poems titled Mattitude with Good Hair; Kittens, Kings, and Costumes; and Coffee, Confidence, and a Sucky Play. (Those women know me so well.) Facilitators never hold back, given the opportunity to be silly and/or fail miserably, and all three of us definitely did both. We echoed what those who’d gone before had said: that knowing there was no way to do it wrong was liberating, even though the prospect of improvising a poem was kind of terrifying.

“Who’s next?” one of the women asked, and a newbie said she’d give it a try. This woman has, quietly but doggedly, held firm to her goal of stepping out of her comfort zone as much as possible to see what kind of confidence she can gain. That doesn’t mean that any of this is easy for her; it’s the opposite, and that makes her effort that much more admirable. She struggled with her poem, Mud Pies and Rollerskates, but no one tuned out or offered any criticism. Everyone stayed right with her, encouraging her and offering suggestions and ideas to help her through. This is what strengthens our ensemble: the willingness to buoy the members of our team who are struggling, to take joy in that, and to celebrate them even when others might say that they failed. We know what success truly looks like. It doesn’t always look like “good art”.

And then a returning member, who has never participated in a game before, said, “I’ll do it.”

“WHAT?!?!?!” I whooped, probably throwing something and, I think, stomping my feet (because I cannot be reasonable in moments like this). “OH MY GOD, FOR REAL????” She grinned and stepped into the circle. “Hot Dogs and Poetry!” someone yelled. The woman paused, thought for a moment, and then sharply raised a pointed index finger in front of her face. We shrieked with laughter, absolutely thrilled, and she performed a terrible, terrible poem with determination and a great sense of humor.

We erupted in applause as she sat back down, beaming, with one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on her face. “What was that like???” I asked (still sort of hyperventilating). “It wasn’t that bad!” she said. “At first I didn’t know what to do, but then when I remembered I couldn’t do it wrong, I kind of relaxed into it. It was kind of freeing.”

The woman who’d gone first took another turn (Caves and Flowers), and then she nudged a longtime member who’d walked in late, dejected and upset about something. She is usually very animated — if she’d been feeling better, she probably would have performed five poems — and she dragged herself to her feet, knowing that forcing herself to do things like this usually makes her feel at least a little better. An ensemble member gave her the title Shattered Glass and Roses, hoping she could use the drama of those images to let out some of her angst, and it seemed to work. “I didn’t feel as melancholy when I was up there,” she said.

And then. And then, and then, and then.

A four-year vet, who, in all that time, has never participated in a game like this (and very, very few besides) said, “Fuck it, I’ll do it.” I shrieked again — I can’t overstate how huge this was — and she entered the circle, clearly nervous but determined to push through it. This woman fought a wicked sword fight in Macbeth, and a returning member shouted, “Swords and Cotton Candy!” She grinned, shook her head, took a deep breath — and plunged to the ground, proceeding to lunge and crawl around the circle while saying words that I so don’t remember because they so didn’t matter, waving an invisible sword all over the place and finally coming to a very dramatic stop. We exploded. “That was amazing!!!” I yelled. “What happened???” With a huge smile, she laughed, “I just really want to be part of the group.” She is — she always has been — but we knew what she meant. “My heart was racing, but you all just seemed to be having so much fun! It was nice to let go.”

We were having such a good time, it didn’t seem like anyone felt like buckling down and doing anything linear, so we sort of stumbled into a “Shakespeare Jam”. One of the women absolutely loves Juliet’s “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” A few of us had some fun letting loose vocally on those lines, and then two of last season’s witches did the parts of “Double, double, toil and trouble…” that they remembered off the tops of their heads. Last season’s Macduff read some of her lines from a Complete Works, I performed Richard III’s opening soliloquy (which is stuck in my head forever, apparently), last season’s Macbeth did part of a monologue, and another woman read some of her lines from Macbeth. It was a good warm up for next Tuesday’s “Monologue-Off”, and we left on a cheery, positive note.

As we gathered our things, I made sure to check in with the two vets who’d played for the first time tonight. They were both beaming, and I’m sure I was, too. I’m practically dancing now, as I’m writing. Any breakthrough is exciting, but when that breakthrough has been a year — or four years — in the making, hoo boy. That is something else. What a thrill.

Season Eight: Week 3

Tuesday / September 18

Written by Frannie

We welcomed one new member tonight and, after a quick round of introductions, launched into a spirited game of “Zumi Zumi”, a sort of call-and response-game, played in a circle, that requires more focus (and rhythm) than most of us can sustain for long. It got very, very silly, with one woman saying to her sole remaining opponent, “I love ya, shorty, but I’m gonna have to take ya out.” When “Shorty” won — I believe for the first time — there was all sorts of laughter, cheering, and clapping. It was a great way to start off the evening.

We stuck to our plan to review the last few scenes on their feet, beginning with 1.3. A couple of women volunteered to read Sir Toby and Maria, and, when no one volunteered to read Sir Andrew, I said I’d give it a go. We gave it our best shot — and the woman playing Sir Toby really committed to the character’s drunken bombast — but the scene still proved difficult to understand for most people, which I think was the result of our not having preplanned a little blocking/business and my not having read the scene in about a month!

One of the women said that it’s helpful for her to see scenes on their feet, even if they were jumbled, because the language makes more sense to her that way. She suggested that we run through the first three scenes of the play, one after the other, to see what we could get out of that. We wrangled enough people to make it happen and then gave it a whirl.

The scenes were still rough, but running through them again began to give us some ideas of the strengths and potential pitfalls of this play, and what we can to do manage them. “When does this work best? What’s it gonna take to tell this story?” I asked. One woman replied, “Big dramatics! Big personalities! Bright colors! And LOUD!”

One woman noted that the language is really complex, and another said she was concerned that, if sitting and reading it is so challenging, it might be impossible for our audience to understand. She said she thought we should make everything very, very physical so that the story would still come through even if the words didn’t make sense. “It’s like charming a snake,” she said of the language. Everyone agreed with that and wondered how to accomplish it.

I asked if anyone had heard of Commedia dell’arte, and no one had. I said that I thought that tradition might provide some really useful tools as we find the physical comedy we want, even if we don’t rest heavy on its archetypal characters and traditional physicalities. I described it a bit, and the group seemed intrigued. I’ll be bringing in more information as soon as I can put it together!

We moved on to 1.4, a brief scene in which Orsino enlists Viola (now disguised as Cesario) to help him woo Olivia. The scene ends with Viola’s aside to the audience, “Yet a barful strife: / Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife,” at which point nearly every ensemble member said, “Dun dun DUN!” (dramatic music foreshadowing something terrible). We all burst out laughing, and one woman said, “Wait, why did we all do that?! Nothing bad is going to happen. It doesn’t make any sense!”

“No!” I replied. “It’s completely inappropriate! But it’s so funny! I think we should keep it!” We realized that we’re probably going to have a TON of funny ideas like this as we go, and we need to keep a record so we don’t forget. This led me to ask who might like to be in charge of that. Last year’s ensemble members grinned and pointed at our Backstage Captain, who managed things SO beautifully when the rest of us were all over the place. “Oh god. Oh no. Okay,” she laughed. We named her The Keeper of the Jokes, and she suggested we call her “Joker” for short. She lit up. “That could be my prison nickname! I’ve never had one!”

By then just a handful of of ensemble members was still in the room, and we had a good amount of time left. Several people (including me) expressed frustration that people are already skipping out so early, just three weeks into the season. Some early departures will always happen due to mandatory callouts that are not within our control, but non-mandatory attendance issues have never cropped up till later in the year. It’s distressing because it interferes not only with our staying on the same page about the play, but with our ability to build trust in the ensemble.

At this point, we’re irritated rather than angry, but it won’t stay that way for long if we don’t address the issue head-on. That said, this is a problem for which we’ve never found a solution. Several ensemble members said (as they have in the past) that their biggest frustration is that inconsistent attendance is disrespectful of the commitment demonstrated by the facilitators. I said I appreciated that and agreed. “But you also have to be in it for yourself or it doesn’t mean anything,” I said, and a longtime ensemble member who used to struggle with her own commitment quietly said, “That’s true.” The more time people spend in the room, doing the work, the more they get out of it.

“I don’t expect anyone to be hardcore,” said one returning member. “I do,” said another. “It’s about dedication. You’re very dedicated to us. We need to be dedicated in return.” There’s a double standard, she said. “What are they gonna do out in the world?” Another woman agreed, “It teaches us accountability, too.”

I added that we need to build a lot of trust in each other, as well as a solid understanding of the material, in order to execute the kind of physical comedy we’d been talking about. “This play wants to fly.” I said. “I want to fly!” said one woman. There was some predictable singing and laughing, and the tension in the room eased a bit.

“All right,” I said as we gathered our things to leave. “We’ll talk about this on Friday, and I’ll put my foot down.” One longtime ensemble member said, “I’m so proud of you, Frannie.”

We’ll see how it goes...

Friday / September 21

Written by Matt

Some days at Shakespeare in Prison are about intellectual inquiry. Some days are about getting to know one another better. Some are about learning to speak clearly and with purpose or to let loose and inhabit a character onstage without inhibitions, and some are just plain about having fun. Some days at SIP, though, are about taking a hard look at the group itself and figuring out how best to serve the ensemble, its members, and the program as a whole--and it was time for one of those days.

In some ways, Shakespeare in Prison--its members and facilitators--is at its best when directly addressing our core values and how to implement them through day-to-day policies. On Tuesday, we had recognized the need for a serious discussion of “showing up,” both in terms of attendance and being fully present for the entirety of each session. Ordinarily, we bring these sorts of discussions to the ensemble in an open-ended way, but there have been a few times when facilitators have needed simply to make a decision, present it to the group, and say that we will reassess at the end of the season. Tonight was one of those times--we have tried every year to address the issue of people leaving early or simply not showing up regularly and the effect of that issue on the group. We decided that we needed to be stricter about following our own guidelines, less flexible in making exceptions, and expand the definition of “attendance” to include more than simply signing in and taking part in some of the basic activities.

So today was one of those rare times when much of the discussion was spent telling people how things were going to be and then opening the floor for reactions to it, rather than developing policies based on the ensemble’s feeling. Honestly, it felt like a relief. Some very dedicated members had been agitating for a tough conversation about attendance for a long time. Some equally important members of the ensemble whose attendance and attention had been spotty or problematic seemed a little relieved to have clearer expectations outlined. When Frannie was done laying down the new rules, there was no pushback.

The first reactions were mea culpas. One member who joined last year and became a key member of the ensemble, admitted that she had not been fully present this season. She explained what else she is going through, acknowledged that those things were not an excuse, and admitted, “I’m not giving it one hundred percent.” She said that she had been thinking since Tuesday about her place in the group, and had concluded that she needed to leave for this season and make space for someone who could actually be fully present every time.

One of the women wanted to be sure that we didn’t assume that her lack of participation in theatre games was a lack of dedication. “This is important to me,” she said. “This means a lot to me, and I don’t want you thinking that I’m not giving it my all.” Another member reminded her that the games can be as beneficial as anything else. When they had played Blind Cars (a Theatre of the Oppressed exercise) together, there had been a disaster: the first woman had driven the second off the stage while her eyes were closed. Still, she said, “I trusted you after that--even though you drove me off the stage--I trusted you more.”

After working through this tough discussion, we decided to play a silly improv game: Bus Stop. In this game, an actor occupies a bus stop, and another comes in, carrying a single, clear quirk that is intended to drive the other away from the bench. It is essentially a battle of opposing motivations. After some truly ridiculous characters (one always offered something disgusting to smell, another chatted loudly on a cell phone, another was a human trafficker looking for a 2-for-1… or something), one woman reflected that it was a lot like any other type of acting: “You have to put yourself out there. You have to step out of the comfort zone.”

At last, we turned to reading Act I, scene v from the play. The women really seemed to enjoy the scene’s over-the-top silliness, especially Malvolio’s dour presence. “Malvolio has no personality!” exclaimed one, “He’s funny because he’s so dull!” Another noted that “Olivia seems so depressed, and Feste needs to be upbeat” to play off her.

At last, we put up the ring and left the room. Tough as it was, the conversation that dominated the day’s activity seems to have reinvigorated the group and, at least for now, helped ensure that our members are present for the entire time of the session. The future will bring new challenges and new versions of old ones, but as we set the ring back up in the air above us, we felt stronger and more connected for having addressed head-on one of the crucial issues facing our ensemble.

Season Eight: Weeks 1 and 2

Friday / September 7

Written by Frannie.

We circled up for our check-in and ring exercise, and then we took our seats for our traditional three questions! Those are:

What brings you to Shakespeare in Prison?

What do you hope to gain from the experience?

What is the gift that you bring?

We spent just about all of our time on this! We heard common threads: people have joined or are remaining in the ensemble because of its being a safe space — a family. Folks are there to gain confidence, try something new, and learn better “people skills”.

A woman who participated in our third season (Romeo and Juliet) is back. In answer to the first question, she said, “I missed you guys, for one. And my growth… I haven’t been here in years because I didn’t have my act right. Now my act is right, so I’m back.”

A new member said she joined because, “I want to be more like myself again.”

One returning member said she hadn’t been sure she’d do this again, but, “Over the summer, I realized coming here kept me focused and offered me a safe spot. And I missed it. So now I’m back.” Another said, “All of these lovely faces. The best people in prison are the people in this group. Probably not just in prison either.” Still another said, “All of you guys. I miss so many of you. And I learned so much about myself last year — how could I not come back when it helped me learn so much about myself that I didn’t know before?”

Another returning member has been with us for several years, though things haven’t always gone smoothly. But last year ended on a very high note. What brings her back is, “You guys and the ensemble… to see what changes will be in myself and what changes will be in others… It’s like little tiny miracles inside myself, and I love to see that happen for other people, too… One of the main things I’ve learned in this group is how to trust other people. It’s pretty cool.” Another woman, who left the group early last season, said, “That year off killed me. Worst year ever, and I totally could have used Shakespeare… The therapy I get out of it really helps me.” She said she wanted to gain “a better understanding on how to deal with my emotions better… Shakespeare has helped me distinguish which emotion I was going through.”

And one returning member summed it up for all of the others who’ve come back to the group: “I absolutely love Shakespeare, and I found a place where I actually feel like I belong, and I can be me, and everybody accepts it, whether it’s my bad or good.”

Tuesday / September 11

Written by Frannie.

We had a very, very silly evening to start off the season in earnest!

After check-in, we sat in our circle, talking through some things. We kept speaking over each other, though, and it began to be a little frustrating. In the men’s ensemble, we use the code word “orange” to ask people to stop talking and focus, and we use “ratatouille” to call a hold on tangents. (Or at least we’re using ratatouille right now. It was my idea. It may not last. We’ll see.) In any case, I mentioned the code words to the women to see if they’d like to give the idea a try. We have, of course, been able to draw quite heavily on the experiences we’ve had at WHV when working with the guys, and I love the idea of bringing ideas from that ensemble to this one as well. We decided, on a trial basis, to use “ice cream” for “focus up”, and “pineapple” for “tangent”. We’ll see how it goes!

We’re facing some headwinds this fall, as the “No Fear” editions of the play haven’t yet arrived at the prison, so we’ve been working just with the Arden editions — which I wasn’t able to distribute until last week. That said, a couple of “old-timers” and I assured everyone that we used to work with much less (just typewritten copies in manila folders), and that we’d all keep each other on the same page.

We read that great first monologue: “If music be the food of love, play on…” And then we paused. A few people were already feeling lost, and I didn’t blame them! I asked if anyone had gotten the gist — or anything, really. “He has lots of really strong feelings. Of what, I don’t know,” said one woman. Another said, “I feel like he’s in love or just got his heart broken.”

One of the women read the speech aloud. I asked if she’d felt, or if we’d heard, anything in the language — the mechanics of it — that could give us some clues about this guy. “It’s… dramatic,” replied one woman. “Yeah?” I said, excitedly. She looked at the page, laughed, and said, “I picture him as an over-actor.” I’ve known this woman for a couple of years, and I know what a ham she can be. “Oh, do you?” I said. “That’s so interesting. Would you like to — oh, I don’t know — give a dramatic reading?” She started cracking up. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said. “It’s an invitation, not a demand.”

But of course she got to her feet and gave a HILARIOUS reading, gesticulating melodramatically, even with the book in one hand. We gave her a huge round of applause. I’m so grateful that this happened so organically — that this woman, who is such a well-respected leader in our ensemble, was able to demonstrate, right off the bat, how to just let your hair down and play with Shakespeare.

We read through the rest of the scene, tackling the play’s first puns — and talking about how to deal with some of that wordplay in a mature, professional way. It was a surprise to some of our newbies that Shakespeare’s plays are infamous for their raunchiness, and we don’t shy away from that — we just try not to get TOO silly, and we always keep the conversations focused on our interpretation of the play and how to perform it.

We put the scene on its feet for the first time, with three vets playing the characters. They had a lot of fun with it, and so did we. But none of us were sure we had a much better understanding of the scene.

Meanwhile, I had been sort of dancing in my seat — I honestly had no idea what my “in” to this play would be when we walked in, but just talking and laughing about it with this ensemble gave me so many new, exciting ideas — particularly about Orsino — that I just couldn’t stand it. I asked if we could do the scene again so I could give Orsino a shot. “Whenever someone is as excited as I am right now, they should read, so I want to read!” I said. One new member read Curio, and a vet read Valentine.

I felt strongly that I needed a fainting couch, but of course we didn’t have one of those, so I settled for lounging on the floor. I definitely defied Hamlet’s advice to the players — it was some BAD acting — but, boy oh boy, was it fun, and I wasn’t the only one laughing. Then the woman reading Valentine came crashing into the circle — and, for some reason, did a pratfall right on her face. It was so, so funny.

We moved on to the play’s second scene, which introduces Viola and the seeds of many plot points. I stepped away for a few minutes and came back to more laughter. The group caught me up, and then we talked about how these first scenes are often flipped in production. Why? We saw some good reasons for switching them, and some for keeping them as they are. “It could go either way,” one person said. I snorted and replied, “That could be the tagline for the play. Twelfth Night, or What You Will: It Could Go Either Way.” One of our vets replied, “I mean, this is Shakespeare. You could do it backwards, and it would still make sense.” More and more and more laughter. After three very serious plays in a row, it’s good to be working on a comedy again!

The conversation kept rolling, and the excitement — the joy — was palpable. One woman loudly proclaimed, “I wanna be Viola!” This is her third season, and this is a huge change from day one. When I met her, she was very tense and quiet, hardly ever volunteered to read or perform, but begrudgingly took a role in the performance to continue spending time with her friends in the ensemble. Something clicked for her at the end of that first season, though — she gushed all through our wrap up meeting. When we started back up, exactly a year ago, she turned to me during the reading of the second witch scene in Macbeth and quietly said, “I wanna be a witch!” And now Viola, and broadcasting it to the group. That’s a really clear and exciting progression for her.

Another longtime ensemble member stated that this finally seems to be the time to fulfill a dream she’s been pushing since Othello: to set a play “in spacetime.” This led to a lively discussion of what exactly that could mean, and I encouraged her to keep thinking it over. It’s entirely possible that this play could work in a space setting. Or a space time. I’m still not sure exactly what this means, but if I know anything about this woman, it’s that she’ll explain it in great detail over the next few months.

Meanwhile, a woman who joined us last fall found the page she was looking for in her book and said, “Excuse me! Could I please bring your attention to this bit about her pretending to be a eunuch? I just felt like we went through it too fast.” She told us the page and paragraph of the Arden intro that she was referencing and then read it aloud, taking us through her thoughts about all of it. I thanked her for filling us in. “It caught me off-guard, so I decided I wanted to read about it!” she said, grinning. This is the woman who, just a year ago, told me she thought she might have to quit because she wasn’t smart enough to understand the language. And now here she was, leading us through this somewhat-archaic concept while reading out of a pretty scholarly text. It’s absolutely wild.

Friday / September 14

Written by Matt.

Today’s session was a little bit lightly attended, which frustrated the core group that showed up. Since reading the first scene of the play, a number of our most dedicated members have been embracing the joyousness of reading a comedy after three years of tragedies, but the small group deflated the energy a little bit. This is not the first time that this problem has come up in Shakespeare in Prison, and we try to deal with it the way we try to deal with everything: head-on and with the best interests of the ensemble in mind.

Also sapping everyone’s energy was the cold! It was freezing in the auditorium, so we decided to open the session with our Six Directions exercise, which comes from Michael Chekhov’s acting technique. It is a highly physical exercise in which each actor moves their energy in each of six directions (right, left, up, down, forward, back), alternately moving with a staccato or legato quality. Warmed up and feeling more positive and connected, we read Act I, scene iii. The previous scenes had been funny, but I.iii is plain slapstick. From the introduction of the characters (one of whom is named “Sir Toby Belch” and another is “Sir Andrew Aguecheek”), the women in the circle connected with the bawdy humor and wild abandon of the characters, especially Sir Toby. At least two of them felt really drawn to him and his reckless abandon.

“Wait,” said one member. “How do you pronounce this place?” When another one said, “Ill-EAR-ia,” the first woman muttered, “Sounds like a medication…,” which had everyone laughing again.

Since these Twelfth Night scenes--and especially these scenes--want to be acted out physically, we quickly transitioned to reading them on our feet, and really hamming it up. One member who was away last year jumped into Sir Toby without having even heard the first read-through, and it was spectacular! All of us were struggling to contain ourselves every time she hit a punchline, which she did instinctively and with panache.

Asked afterwards why acting drunk is so much fun, she thought for a second and said, “Drinking and getting high for people is how they release. This guy (Toby, that is) was probably real uptight until he’s drinking, when he’s everybody’s best friend.” She thought for another second, then said that the fun of acting that way is that “[Toby] doesn’t hold back, and he doesn’t stop himself.” Then she turned to her scene partner, who was also hilarious. “Thanks for sitting me down,” she deadpanned. “Well,” the other woman replied, “you couldn’t stand up! You were spilling beer everywhere!”

The next scene has some comedy, but it is mostly to set up for the main plot of Viola wooing Olivia on behalf of Orsino. We were able to talk about gender roles in Twelfth Night here, since Viola is dressed up as a man (Cesario), but the reason Orsino sends her/him to woo Olivia is that she looks like a man who doesn’t look like a man. A few of the women were really interested in this point, reading over the lines in Act I, scene iv about Viola/Cesario’s “smooth and rubious” lips and high voice. The netherworld of gender that Viola inhabits (a woman dressing up as a man who resembles a woman) has always been an interesting part of the play, but it seems to have a special pull on many of the women here, who live for years at a time among other women, and for whom the pageantry of gender roles can become very complicated very quickly. It’s early yet to be able to explain exactly what that pull is, but some of our members seemed to feel that part of I.iv deeply.